The Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC)has retracted two 2003 studies after concluding that figures in the papers had been duplicated, and portions of some figures in one paper “did not accurately represent the results of the experimental conditions.”

The two newly retracted papers have the same last author — Therese Kinsella, a biochemist at the University College Dublin (UCD), who told us the data have been upheld by subsequent research, but that she supports the retractions, which are now part of a UCD investigation.

Butt, however, is not an author of either of the newly retracted papers. Although Butt’s LinkedIn page still lists her as a postdoctoral researcher at UCD, a spokesperson from the institution told us she is no longer based there.

We don’t often see such old papers retracted. Kaoru Sakabe, Manager of Publishing Issues at the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, which publishes JBC, told us how this decision came about:

We received a tip from a reader about potential problems with figures in the two papers. We examined the figures and determined that the concerns raised by the reader appeared to be legitimate, so we began an official investigation. In the end, we determined that the papers should be retracted.

Kinsella told us that the science in the two studies that were pulled on September 9, 2016, has been

…fully upheld in subsequent studies.

She added:

The matter of both articles came as a complete surprise to me and will be the subject of a thorough investigation which I am in complete agreement with. I will be fully cooperating with this.

Kinsella went further to explain that the follow-up investigation into the papers is being conducted at her institution. The UCD spokesperson confirmed that the investigation into the papers is underway but has not yet been completed.

When asked why these papers were pulled, Kinsella said the authors could not provide “satisfactory answers” to the journal queries due to the papers being published so long ago. Kinsella, nevertheless, added that she agrees with the retractions since she and her co-authors weren’t able to provide the source material.

This article has been retracted by the publisher. In Fig. 5B, lanes 1 and 3 were duplicated. Fig. 8A did not accurately represent the results of the experimental conditions. In Fig. 8B, lanes 1 and 3 were duplicated, and lanes 4 and 5 did not accurately represent the results of the experimental conditions.

“The British Journal of Pharmacology is issuing this Expression of Conce rn to notify readers that f ollowing formal inte rnal inves-tigations, the British Journal of Pharm acology has concluded that duplication is likely to have occurred in ﬁgure 11, panels Aand B. Because of the length of time that has passed s ince publicat ion, the authors have be en unable to provide the original blotsandthushavebeenunabletoverifyorrefutetheallegations.Readers are advised to keep this in mind when reading this paper. Thepublication of this Expression of Concern has bee n agreed between the authors, th e Journal Editor in Chief and John Wiley & SonsLimited”

2017 erratum.http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bph.13681/epdf
ERRATUMThe British Journal of Pharmacology is publishin g this erratum fo llowing formal internal inve stigations of the Research Paper by O’Meara and Kinsella (2004). During the preparation of Figure 5, lanes 6 in panels b and c w re reordered to align them with lane 6 in panel a, where in all cases, lane 6 corresponded to the RNA control. In carrying out this alignment, an error occurred where part of an adjacent lane in panel 5c was copied over and, hence, was duplicated in error. The authors wish to correct this whereby there is no reordering of the data in panels b or c, as depicted in the corrected version of Figure 5 below.In addition, the legend to Figure 6 incorrectly refers to panels a lane 6, whereas it should correctly refer to panels a-e, lane 5.